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Metric system

There really ought to be an article on the metric system & the American/UKian resistance to it. Anyone? [1]

I believe, totally without foundation, that the US (conservatively) generally despises it (apart from the scientific community?), while in the UK it's just contraryness (and it's French of course) (turns round three times spits and says 'Whurra' to break the bad luck). Anyhoo - I think we've only officially got miles left - all else is metric.

That's odd, I was talking to someone on holiday from England over here just yesterday about the metric system, and she said it was pretty much routine around her place now. km, ml, g, etc. is just part of everyday life, not a big issue. It's more fuzzy here in Canada, where a lot of things like cookbooks are still in Imperial measures, and a person's height is still referred to in feet and inches. --Kels 15:43, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

Yes, us oldies still use ft/in, lb/oz, gallon/pint °F even cups & teaspoons. It is however illegal to sell things in these measures and they're not taught in school. Unless you're homeschooling that is.

Joke:

Man at timberyard:

"I'd like some 3 inch by 9 inch timber please."

"Sorry sir we're not allowed to sell it like that. What you want is 75 centimetres by 225."

"Okay, how much is that?"

"73 pence a foot, sir"

Joke ends. (sorry!)

Keep^{the faith} 16:10, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

This is quickly turning into an ACD, anyone want to do the honours? --Kels 19:13, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

I was hoping that someone would clear it and start something serious Keep^{the faith} 19:22, 24 July 2007 (CDT)

Eh, I added more silly, but also some quasi-sensible gibberish, too. I still wouldn't be offended if it went ACD, but it's not that silly of a topic to have in main. PS, that joke (?) above should be moved the article. human^{be in} 13:17, 22 August 2007 (CDT)

Capitalization

Do we like the double capital? If not, I really don't know how to fix it (or if I can). If anyone wants to tell me how to do it on my talk page, I'd be happy to change it. -Smyth 12:05, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, got it. Is deleting a page something I can do? -Smyth 12:19, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

As soon as you're demoted to sysop. ;-) Susan^{talk to me} 12:24, 27 September 2007 (EDT)

Metric isn't identically SI

There are several metric units which are not a part of the SI system. The SI unit of energy, for example, is the Joule. The Calorie is metric, but not SI.

I'm not sure how to wedge that into the article as it stands, but there you have it. Brianetta ^{Brian Ronald, UK. Talk here} 20:06, 10 May 2008 (EDT)

I tried to rearrange the intro section to vaguely accomodate your point. See what you think. human 14:27, 11 May 2008 (EDT)

Now I'm not a nutter

But the reason some of us the UK are objectionable is that we have been forced to adopt metric units completely. In engineering and scientific contexts, metric is all there is, but I don't want some Johnny Foreigner telling me that can't buy a pint of beer (which we still can) or a pound of mince (illegal!). Anyway, those 'Murrricans don't even use proper gallons or know how much a stone is..... DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 20:42, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

• Are you trolling? Because that's more or less the way every other country in the world has done it... EVDebs (talk) 06:15, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

No I am not 'trolling', and I resent that insinuation. What I am saying is that many Britons are pissed off that they are being forced to stop using imperial units. No one likes to be forced. DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 12:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Tat's how I read you, DS, it's a bit "Daily Mailish" but reaches every stratum of society. They see the EU as the driving force & don't like it. As the % who've grown up with metric increases though, I think it'll vanish. Imperial is, to me, still the intuitive way to measure by eye or feel but you have to use metric. 13:08, 9 March 2010 (UTC)   ^Contribs_Talk

The whole "Johnny Foreigner" thing is the reason that it's nuts to reject it - it's totally nonsensical to reject a unit of measurement on those virtually xenophobic grounds. And it's nothing to do with being "forced", people are forced to do many things and don't bat an eyelid (prior to metric, you were also "forced" to use Imperial units), it's resistance to and fear of change. ^narchist 14:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yup!   ^Contribs_Talk 14:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

For the real oldies amongst us - remember how we howled with anguish when the currency went metric? Now, would you return to the old system? Some people just don't like change. Jack Hughes (talk) 15:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with everything posted, and yes, with each generation metric will be come more and more natural and common, but I still think it's wrong that the EU have declared that it is illegal for old Mrs. Muggins to buy mince by the pound. Daily Heilish? Yes! True? I'm afraid so! DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 22:27, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

a stone for those not of the British Commonwealth is of course 14 pounds. That didnt throw anyone though with 12 pence to the shilling an 20 shillings to the pound we soldiered on regardless. The ha'pennies were a bit of a challange though. "thats will be 2 pounds 14 shillings and 11 pence ha'penny. wtf! Hamster (talk) 23:03, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I remember that there was a whole special arithmetic class when I was a kid teaching us how to add and subtract money. ħuman 00:13, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Now I'm a nutter

The spelling in this is article is plain weird. I can't read it without wanting to change it. It is a metre, not a meter. A litre, not a liter. The USians are the only people that spell it that way and they don't even use the metric system. It is the correct spelling according to those French guys, why do we (as in Human) insist on the incorrect US spelling? - π 22:45, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Believe it was Huw who (HOO HOO?) went round Murcanising it.   ^Contribs_Talk 22:47, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

This is especially important as a 'meter' is a device for measuring something, a 'metre' is a unit of length. DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 22:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

It is really to read as someone who has grown up with the metric system and wouldn't even know where to find a furlong. (EC) @ DeltaStar Extremely good point. - π 22:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

That's funny because in two other languages I know it's liter, meter etc. -- Nx / talk 23:00, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I despise the metric system

It strikes me as the epitome of hubristic, top-down planning. It lacks human scale, partly by its arbitrary design, and partly because of its monomaniacal decimalism. It needs to be reworked around powers of twelve rather than ten.

The fundamental units are flawed. The meter and liter are reasonable, human-scale units, or at least they would be if there were an easy way to divide them into thirds and fourths. But the gram is too small for most commodities, and the apparent default unit is actually the kilogram. The worst offender is the degree celsius, which is too broad and ambiguous for the weather report; Fahrenheit should be kept for human-scale measuring.

I suppose that ideally, weights and measures would be purely local and customary; they would vary from country to country, and better yet, from town to town. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

*wipes tears of laughter* Please tell me you are not serious.--ZooGuard (talk) 17:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, I tune my fiddle's A to 440 Hz. A visiting German orchestra came through town, tuned to 443. In the olden days, musicians tuned to the local church organ, or whatever else tickled their fancy. I have no idea what minstrels wandering from town to town were in the habit of doing. For my lutherie work, it's grams and millimeters (grammes, millimetres, whatev.) I buy strings made in France, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, China, the UK, and the USA. I'd hate to think of the opportunities for miscommunication (certainly not shenanigans, o no nay never) if every little fiefdom used the local big man's thumb for an inch.

My littlest brother told the story of the time he was in Canada, reading the speed limit signs in klicks/hour, blithely dividing by eight and multiplying by five, until his beloved in the shotgun seat pointed out the orange numbers on the inside of the speedometer dial. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That is one of the single silliest masterpieces of post hoc reasoning I have ever seen. Truth is, as someone who does a lot of cooking and metricates recipes I post on my blog just in case... it's no big deal. European recipe writers seem to like to work in deciliters, which is about three shot glasses worth of liquid. Centigrade is good enough for scientists. And frankly, the metric system is the lingua franca of international measurement, so we're kind of stuck with it. EVDebs (talk) 18:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I get a giggle out of US media reporting weights in multiples of eleven. That's when you know they did a conversion from kilos to pounds. I suppose they know their audience— every so often I see some old coot on a forum saying something like, "I'm an American; what's that in inches?" when every worker in the trade uses mm. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 18:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Ha! I'm going to have to keep an eye out for that. I do know Phaidon, when they do their cookbooks for the American market, often leave out the metric measurements when it would be just as well to leave them in. 1kg of meat is fine. 2.25 looks weird. EVDebs (talk) 19:31, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I admit I can see Smerdis's point. A pint is about the right size for a beverage serving, either US or Imperial. Most everyone has a foot on the end of their leg. I've got an inch across my thumb (and a cm across my little fingernail, so that isn't really dispositive.) Stone for weighing humans comes out in small numbers, easily dealt with, likewise hands for horse heights. This whole decimal malarkey is an artifact of a biological accident. Much better to use dozens or a base of 60. Oh, wait, we do, for minutes, seconds, and degrees. Hrmph. At least we didn't get stuck with that decimal year they tried for a while. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 18:41, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The English and American system is founded on things that can be easily measured from parts of the human body and common household objects: feet, fathoms, hands, teaspoons, cups, a thousand paces. It has human scale because it is rooted and evolved, developed from usage rather than decree. The meter, by contrast, was originally supposed to be one ten millionth of a quarter of the earth's circumference, but they apparently blew the math there. Now it's "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299,792,458 of a second." Fortunately, I have a flashlight and a stopwatch. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 03:54, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

A yard is the distance between my nose and the outstretched fingertips of my arm held out to the side (half a fathom, oddly enough.) A meter is the distance between the same two features of topographical anatomy, only with my head turned 30° away from the raised arm.

Another useless factoid: a Micronesian traditional navigator measures 45° of stellar altitude by lifting his gaze until he feels the skin start to wrinkle on the back of his neck. Aren't you glad you asked? Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 04:09, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Let's see... twelve inches to the foot (how long is an inch?), three feet to a yard (there's an etymological orphan for you), 5280 ft to a mile (except when it's 6076.12), 16 ounces to a pound (except when it's 12, and the ounce is something like 30g). And then it's 16oz in a pint, except where it's 20 (believe me, the line about half and full liter beer glasses in 1984 makes no sense at all to an American), in which case the gallon goes from 128 to 160oz, but that isn't right either because the imperial and US ounces aren't even the same! (See also: American homebrewers of the 1970s and 80s who learned from British books with American equipment and wound up with half-fermented beer all over the kitchen floor from overflows.) On top of all that, US volume measurements are in base 2 but you'd never know that because a bunch of the intermediate measurements like gills are no longer in use. Human factors my ass. (Which weighs more than it should in pounds, kilos, or stone.) That's not "human factors", it's just pointless cruft. No thanks. It's bad enough that US intransigence on the measurement issue has stuck the world with a need to use our units in some major industries. Metric at least has the advantage of standardizing everything it can touch, and the beauty of it is that in the kitchen, the only thing I ever have to convert is temperatures because all my scales and measuring cups are both metric and US measurements. (See: speedometer above.) Not to mention, I've never quite been able to get my head around acres, but I can just walk off a rough hectare if I need to. EVDebs (talk) 06:10, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

In the kitchen, I go by familiarity with the local utensils, the water for my daily glop being an inch shy of both sides of a certain slant in a certain pan. Dry rice and oats I measure with my hands, about three rounded palmfuls to a serving. There is a little spring dial scale that seldom gets used, poor thing.

An inch in some languages is a thumb: pulgado and pouce, for example. The width of my thumb, lightly pushed onto a flat surface, comes remarkably close to a modern English/US inch. (In the days of Amati and Stradivari, the Brescian inch was somewhat longer. There's that town to town thing again.) A mile is mille passum, or a thousand paces (which some folks don't recognize to be two thousand steps) with a nautical mile being two thousand yards for practical ranging purposes. One of my favorite archaic measurements is fistmele, measured with a fist and an outstretched thumb.

Happy to see someone else recognizing the doubling that goes with drams, gills, cups, pints, firkins, jereboams, tuns, and the others I've missed since I don't use them daily. A feature of language death is that we no longer care about the details such as the grammatical gender of a teapot. I, for one, welcome our new decapod overlords. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 12:51, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

You people and your bizarre imperial measures with your reluctance to use metric consistently are the reason why I have no concept of weights, measures, distances etc. I was taught metric at school but at the time everyone else used imperial. Implementation was haphazard and optional for metric. As a result I use miles for long distances, metres and centimetres for shorter distances, metres or feet for height of buildings mountains etc, feet and inches for height and length of bodies and body parts, metric for wet and dry cooking ingredients, pints for drinks, stone for body weight, kilo for the weight of anything else and probably lots more such examples. I have no standard measure to compare things and have no way judging such things unless I can physically see or pick up things. I am pleased that these days metric is compulsory in the UK because when it was a choice has made my head spin. Metric martyr bastards.AMassiveGay (talk) 13:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Standardization is inherently authoritarian. Everyone's lives have to be so arranged as to make the forms easy to fill out. Here are your papers. Here is the number your government knows you by instead of your name.

In Seeing Like a State, James C. Scott speaks of a people in I believe Kalimantan, who say that another village is "three rice cookings" away; everybody knows how long it takes to cook rice, and can tell when it's done. But when the State shows up, that won't do.

Of all the standard measurements, the only widely accepted one that retains any aesthetic value is the Roman calendar. The twelve month year, we specifically owe to Julius Caesar. At its conception, the Roman calendar was vague on what happened between December and March; it just started up again with the equinox moon, and only counted ten months and some indifferent time in between. That's why December, the twelfth month, is the tenth month. The months of high summer got renamed for Roman emperors for the most random of reasons, and they extended their lengths to the maximum allowable by picking on poor February, a month nobody liked anyways. We got the seven day week from the Jews and Babylonians. We got the sixty second hour and the 360 degree circle from the Sumerians. The calendar is rooted and valid in a way that the metric system is not. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 05:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, you know, globablization is a force that cannot be ignored and should be adapted to for our benefit. Standardization is a large and essential part of that. Nullahnung (talk) 05:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

As arguments go, that is definitely... an argument. I'm not sure what it's supposed to prove, mind. Standardization is inherently authoritarian? You want to run that one by the IETF? Standardization performs a critically important function in that it enables communication between multiple parties. Rather than dealing with, say, multiple feet, or inches, or miles, a meter has the same definition everywhere on Earth. My mention of recipes above is one example; if I want someone to try something I made, a lot more people are going to understand metric measurements than US. This is a good thing. I can also print out those recipes and easily find a binder to fit them, because paper sizes are standardized as well. Go ahead, complain about how standardization is authoritarian, then see what happens when absolutely everything you run into is subject to vendor lockin. Need a binder? Was that Mead, Hammermill, or GP letter size? Send an email? Sorry, sir, that destination provider isn't compatible with our network. Remember MicroChannel and NuBus? (And yes, I know they were both better than ISA. But MCA was proprietary to IBM, and NuBus may as well have been Apple-proprietary since TI and NeXT were the only other manufacturers that used it.) Do you think auto mechanics actually like having to keep two sets of tools around? Without standardization, nothing works together, communication is severely impeded, and society winds up becoming an even more fucked-up version of Snow Crash. This is not a desirable outcome for anyone. (Also, validity? Kind of an ass pull there. Once established, metric is just as valid as any other, and it's so widely established now that it's quite a bit more valid.) EVDebs (talk) 08:09, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Standardisation is what keeps many people alive. One of the reasons that the Swedish ship Vasa sank on her maiden voyage was because carpenters used a mixture of Swedish feet (12 inches) and Amsterdam feet (11 inches). Генгис^unbelieving 08:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I had ever understood that the Vasa was simply top heavy, and the King made things worse by arming it with the largest cannons he had, rather than putting lighter guns on the top decks. The huge stern he put on it did not help. Still, valid and useful measurements flow from actual usage and are developed by the people who actually use them, rather than being imposed by decree based on arbitrary fiats that bear no relation to the tasks in which they are employed. Usage is why American and Imperial units are based on powers of two and twelve. They were developed by end users who wanted to divide things into thirds and quarters. A system based on tens works better for tax collectors than it does for farmers. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:05, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

There's that term "valid" again. The metric system has over two centuries of increasing worldwide use behind it. Widespread adoption creates its own kind of validity, inasmuch as it's the lingua franca of international trade and science by now, and in most countries there have been several generations by now that haven't known anything else. Hell, if Jefferson had his way, the US would have beaten France to the punch adopting metric. Calling that "invalid" is like claiming that the US income tax is unconstitutional. EVDebs (talk) 20:36, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, it IS, you know. I have no problem with metric units being voluntarily adopted by people for whom they are useful. But a temperature in celsius or a distance in kilometers is an empty cipher that conveys no meaning. To extract meaning from them, you have to remember stuff like (9/5)x+32 or 0.621371. This is not simplicity, and the inconvenience of having everything decimal does not make up for its obvious disadvantage in communication. All I want is to keep that rubbish out of the cookbook, the weather report, and the road signs. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 21:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Enh, just learn to think in in SI units, and never mind conversion. Being dragged kicking and screaming into contemporary practice is a symptom of being an awkward old fossil or a xenophobe.

Thirty is hot

Twenty is nice

Ten is chilly

And zero is ice.

How many farmers do you see to talk to in any given day? Mechanics and millwrights have had to deal with conflicting measurement standards for ever since. Boy racersAntique car buffs in the UK have to cope with metric, Whitworth, and AF inch measurements. Bicycle mechanics used to keep books detailing the class of fit between various parts from French, Italian, English, US, and other manufacturers. Sometimes, if it don't fit, you can still force it. Better to know ahead of time if you can ever expect to get the thing apart again, once you've hammered the threads. Insisting that archaic measurements are superior for aesthetic reasons strikes me as being a bit precious. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:39, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Weather reports are done in Celsius, period. Always, everywhere. We only see them in Fahrenheit because the meteorologists have to translate for the general public. Lack of metric measurements in cookbooks severely limits the potential market and makes lots of unnecessary work for overseas publishers selling in the US. And you still haven't presented anything resembling a logical argument; everything you've said is highly subjective and kind of whiny. EVDebs (talk) 23:04, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Really? You think Celsius is less meaningful than Fahrenheit? Celsius at least gives you an intuitive way to determine freezing and boiling point of water (0 and 100 degrees). What exactly does Fahrenheit do? Fahrenheit was made using the temperature of salted ice and Fahrenheit's own body temperature, so much more inconsistent and less useful. Nullahnung (talk) 02:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Precious. I had to give up trying to put a Campi group on my 70's hand built Trek frame. It originally came with the same set, but what the fucking holy shitsnacks do I need specialty tools for to work on a bicycle? I got metric and I got imperial or Merkin or whatever it is. Snotty fucking Italians. 03:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and Smerdis, if you were actually trying to claim that the US income tax is unconstitutional, we have an article on that. EVDebs (talk) 07:59, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Gosh. Some who started this discussion must not have understood orders of magnitude and "moving the decimal point." 2103 mL is 2.103 L. 52.3 oz is who knows how many pounds. Otherwise, arguing that one system is better than the other because of anthropocentric chauvinism is sorta silly. (Although I do understand the bike tools.) ^talk 12:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

"Anthropocentric chauvinism?" What other varmints are going to be using any of these measurements other than people? Would we have been better served by a meter originally defined by the circumference of Neptune? Now, it does get somewhat tiresome to be compared to a caveman because you choose to hold on to a bit of your own culture and history, and resist the tide of ugly gray sameness. I don't expect that to be understood, either; but I have to submit that American measures promote human species-ism is at least as silly. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:08, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

That's the darn point. Any scale can be accommodated for. Don't like the height of Everest as 8,848 m? Change it to 8.848 km. Don't like the distance to the Moon as 384,400 km? Change it to 384.4 Mm. Truly, this is a bizarre discussion. ^talk 15:37, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

You know, using a desire to avoid "ugly gray sameness" to oppose switching to a worldwide, established, proven standard is kind of a symptom of being a nutbag, especially when it's an issue of getting rid of pointless and unnecessary complications. You seriously have not given one solid, indisputable advantage that US customary measurements have over metric. The "human factors" argument is subject to literally as many interpretations as there are people, which makes it an utterly terrible argument. And frankly, your complaint that base ten is better for accountants than for farmers (and the idea that the metric system is a covert instrument of control) screams "bugfuck crazy tinfoil hat dude". You do remember that farms are generally businesses, no? (I have also seen an excellent case made that Arabic/Hindu numerals and double-entry accounting were two of the biggest spurs for the Renaissance -- once people knew where their money was going, it was a lot easier to set some aside for art, education, and the like.) Now, if we were trying to create a measuring system for use across multiple civilizations in space, I could see a case for the use of water as a baseline for physical properties (as is the case with metric mass and temperature measurements), and probably use base 16 for counting (I have a feeling that binary numbers are common to pretty much any civilization capable of creating a computer, no matter how many counting appendages they have). But that could be thousands of years off. Meantime, I don't really see what you expect to accomplish by maintaining multiple measuring standards, and I honestly don't think you've thought through the implications even after having them explained to you at considerable length. EVDebs (talk) 21:52, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

It is a simple historical fact that the metric system was introduced as a "covert instrument of control." Chateaubriand, who'd know better than either of us, wrote: "Monsieur de Celles remained a Prefect, because he had been one: his character is that blend of loquacity and petty tyranny, of recruiting officer and quartermaster, which one never loses. If you meet a man to whom, instead of feet, yards and acres, you must speak of decimetres, metres and hectares, you have set hands on a Prefect." It was meant, first and foremost, to bind France and the French empire to the will of the revolutionary government in Paris. The standardization program also included actively suppressing the Breton and Occitan/Provençal languages. The French of metropolitan Paris would be the national standard. We're lucky to have dodged the bullet on the French Revolutionary calendar, which was highly localized to the northern hemisphere in any case. Since you only get a weekend every ten days (there's that goddamn decimalism again) instead of seven, I'm surprised the Republican Party doesn't endorse it. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I will pay you to teach me how to troll as well as this. This is magic. Dollars, buddy. 04:32, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Sit and learn at the feet of a master, then. I am dead serious about the French government and its standardization policies. Successive French governments -- which is this, the fifth republic? -- have sought to suppress Occitan, Breton, Basque, Flemish, Alsatian German, and other minority languages, and have persisted in these efforts long after the rest of the civilized world realized that this was culturally destructive. The long term prospects of some of these languages, which once possessed impressive literatures (Provençal) or are significant in understanding Europe's pre-literary history (Basque) are not good on French soil. The world is poorer for this, I think; even as the world is poorer without ells and arpents. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:47, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

So because the Metric system was created by authoritarian douchebags, we shouldn't use it? Doesn't that seem like throwing the baby out with the bathwater? The history of the system doesn't negate its utility. Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 05:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Is it really that important that everyone must be the same? "Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!" - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 05:13, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Not so much important as useful. Calculations have to be made between different units of measure on a regular basis; they're more complicated with Standard than with Metric, and converting between the two is more complicated still. If everyone used Metric the error rate would diminish significantly.

You brought up the French attitude toward other languages, and you're right to criticize it; but there's a big difference between other languages – which are steeped in culture and tradition, and each of which has a power of creative expression all its own – and other systems of measure – which amount to a few clunky numbers by which we must multiply to get anything done. If, say, the Basque language died out, we would be denied the ability to appreciate Basque literature the way it was intended, but if Standard died out, what would be the loss?

And frankly, you didn't seem to respond to my point. Why is the history of the French attitude toward Metric relevant to whether or not we should use it today? Wehpudicabok [話] [変] 05:37, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Plus, IIRC Metric predated the revolution by a couple of years and the surveying work to create it was, I believe, ongoing during the whole mess. But that still doesn't change the fact that Smerdis' arguments have gone from silly to utterly insane. EVDebs (talk) 06:00, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ To me, it's fairly simple. Do we get a choice in this matter? The people of the United States have spoken repeatedly: we do not like and do not want the metric system. We resent attempts to ram it down our throats. Our government tried during the 1970s; those of us who remember, remember it as a brief insanity, government run amok, insisting on ungainly and ugly Moral Improvement for random and incomprehensible reasons. There was a brief attempt to spend public money to add kilometers to miles on the distance signs on major highways; the last of those Seventies-era signs disappeared about ten years ago, and the effect was rather like insisting that the highways be marked in Urdu as well as English. The metric system may not be the chief reason Ronald Reagan was elected, but it did help. That's the only argument that matters: we do not care whether the metric system is more symmetrical, logical, or internally coherent than familiar systems. The more this is insisted on, the more obnoxious the metric system becomes, and the more the familiar units will be treasured. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:40, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

While I appreciate the charm of the "customary" unit system, I see resistance to metric as, pardon my ableist language, retarded. Contemporary folklore has long held that only three countries in the world remain holdouts. I knew one of them was Burma, but I had to go to the other wiki to find the third one. Hint: it has had close ties to the US for nearly two centuries, by way of a peculiar institution that was abolished by a Republican president. Time for us to join the parade, bud.

I became bi-mensural at a very early age, about the same time I learned to use bad language in an agglutinative non Indo-European tongue, thanks to your US tax dollars at work. Now I live in the land of Starrett, and Browne & Sharpe, where inch tools can be found for a song in the flea markets. I can work with that. I also keep a drawer full of metric wrenches that I've had since I kept an air-cooled flat four-cylinder engine running, in a car designed by Ferdinand Porsche and endorsed by the Führer himself. There. Godwin. Thread over. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

I will never fully understand that libertarian impulse that puts one's own personal comfort above the need to have a functioning society. You are willing to live with potentially disastrous side effects (*cough*marsclimateorbiter*cough*) for the sole purpose of... what? Not having to learn something new? What are you, a robot with your internal programming permanently burned into ROM? Seriously, any political movement that makes a point of pride of ignoring side effects based on some vaguely defined "how things should be" should never be taken seriously, and it's frightening that it is. Smerdis, you're an idiot. That's pretty much all there is to it. You keep complaining about having things "forced down your throat", but it's an argument that's been lost since at least the 1960s, and you and your ilk are the only ones who haven't gotten the message. I mean, it can be done with relatively little pain, but as long as we've got holdouts like you, you're going to make it as difficult as humanly possible to do something we should have done fifty years ago. EVDebs (talk) 21:08, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, as one of the unfortunates that bears the curse of membership in Homo sapiens, I am a robot with internal programming permanently burned into ROM. Part of that programming gave me a foot, a hand, a pace, an armspan, a cubit, and a thumb's breadth; a sensible measuring system would be based on human averages rather than airy abstractions. More importantly, I belong to a tribe large enough to dismiss the metric system, and able to resist pressure to conform, a fact for which I am grateful. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 19:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Then I take it you don't use a modern automobile. I seem to remember seeing Jeeps with numbers on the hind end, proclaiming their engine displacement in liters. Try to undo a nut on a modern car, that's been torqued to snug or beyond, with an SAE open-end wrench and you may lose knuckle skin. Brother, I feel your pain, but retro chic only carries us so far. Sprocket J Cogswell 19:27, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Damn, Smerdis, you're a pretentious git. EVDebs (talk) 22:36, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Guilty as charged, I guess. So it goes. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 05:13, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Sub topic question, UK and metrics

So this is a dumb question, but lots of you are from UK so maybe you can help. I understand from WikiPedia that US and like the congo or something, are the only two countries that don't use metrics. Yet when I'm watching a host of shows on BBC, from the dramas and comedies, to science programs, they will talk about MPH, and 100 miles away, is so and so. Brian Cox, in a show about the scale of hte universe, was really odd in that he talked about the sun being (oh, crap, i know this...hum X KM away) but then when he was in the car, in teh very same show, he said "we need to drive a few miles down the road to get to..." So is it miles, or Km, and do you have issus with grams and liters, too? or is it just the distances?Godot The ablity to breath is such an overrated ability 23:11, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Not British but American here, but I see a couple of things at work. One is that things like "a couple of miles" is an indefinite quantity and the use of miles or mileage is sort of a linguistic fossil in the making. Nothing wrong with that; we still talk about disc jockeys even if they're playing off a laptop or tablet based entirely on flash storage, and if you "tape" something on a DVR, people will still know what you mean even though it goes to a hard drive. There's another issue though; as far as metrication goes, Britain seems to be stuck somewhere in the middle. You can probably blame the metric martyrs and the Daily Mail for that. EVDebs (talk) 23:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I like how Top Gear use the phrase "torques" to refer to foot-pounds. Other than that, The metric system is the only way to do science. ħuman 03:18, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I hear Human measures his weiner in meters. 03:24, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Click on this if you dare. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 03:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Can I say this? I will. I wonder what the girth of his head is. 03:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Miles and pounds are mainly linguistic expressions now. If you buy stuff it's in metric, and most young people talk in metric. Sophie^Wilder 09:18, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's not strictly true. All our speed limits and road signs are still in miles, and pints are still used in pubs (and milk bottles?) but because in our change over to decimal/metric the fogies decided that we needed to keep some old units and so we got caught midstream. Fuel is sold by the litre so our traditional rating of vehicle economy (mpg) is much more difficult to calculate - in Europe they use litres/100km and I still inflate my tyres to a psi value because that's what I've always used. Even though metric is used in shops and meat/cereals/sugar/etc. are in nice round metric sizes you still find things like jams sold in 454gm jars (that's 1lb for those that need a conversion). Even beer, when sold in cans and bottles is in non-imperial sizes like 330, 440 or 500ml - a US pint is 473ml and British pint is 568ml so which is just the right size to quench one's thirst? It also seems that pint glasses nowadays are all rimfill so with 68ml of head I'm only getting half a litre. One of the more arcane things I remember from school was the conversion tables on the back of exercise books listing the relationships between rods, roods, perches, bushels, furlongs, chains, Troy and Avoirdupois we don't need to remember all that stuff as we no longer plough with oxen or harvest with scythes. With metric I instantly know the scale of nano, micro, milli, kilo, mega, giga. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 11:02, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Perspective of the foolish young

So my two cents, really pointless is this: Metric is a great system, But becaus ive spent 20 years learning my fuck all sense system we use here in the US, even once the Us converts ill never really use it because no, wasted effort. --^Mikal_lakiM 17:33, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Compare and contrast....

I'm old enough to remember when Britain converted to decimal currency. Oh no! End of the world as we know it. What will we do without the thruppeny bit, the half crown, the florin? Centuries of culture down the pan! And yet, forty years later we acknowledge the old currency as an anachronism and no one would go back. Old fogeys moan and winge but, as long as we have ten fingers, metric is what works. Innocent Bystander (talk) 15:47, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Expenses

One aspect of the metrication in the United States that I feel Europeans tend to forget is the enormous cost associated with complete metrication in this country. Perhaps you all haven't noticed but our country is much bigger than most countries in Europe and much more populous than say Canada. The cost of metrication would be gigantic, and metrication itself would be a bureaucratic nightmare and not one that the US will undertake any time soon. Certain aspect of the Metric system are used here mostly in wet measurements (and almost always relatied to food). To the ordinary American the metric system seems like a decent idea but most of us gape at the though of actually having to go through with implementing it. Regarding temperature I am slightly more biased in favor of Fahrenheit, at least in certain areas. For instance the Fahrenheit scale is far easier to use for weather related purposes because in the Fahrenheit scale 1 to 100 roughly spans the human comfort zone. In any case what I predict will happen is that eventually decades of exposure from the Metric system will lead to a sort of hybrid with certain "Imperial" or US Customary (the two are very close but the are NOT actually the same) units holding out and ceratin metric measurements becoming more widely used among the public.^{— Unsigned, by: 50.202.217.170 / talk 01:46, 21 February 2014 (UTC)}

/r/metric

https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/comments/3z729g/metric_system_rationalwiki/ Sir ℱ℧ℤℤϒℂᗩℑᑭƠℑᗩℑƠ (talk/stalk) 23:58, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Just a Note

The kilogram is going to be defined by a concept, not a physical object, in the near future: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y#t=529 I don't know how this could be integrated into the article, but it's just something to consider. --Nolidor (talk) 00:54, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

For those who don't feel like listening to a talking head for eleven or twelve minutes, it is about the Avogadro project. It looks like a way to refine the precision to which Avogadro's famous constant is known, on the way towards redefining the kilogram in terms of a physical constant. The measurement uses finely shaped silicon spheres with a mass of very nearly one kilogram.

I don't see how this fits the RW mission. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 03:18, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's relevant. Even if there were some point in talking about it, metric is not the same as SI. Frankly, the far more broad "metric system" doesn't much care how SI units determine the value of a kilogram. - Grant (talk) 03:20, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

SI is the modern metric system though used for most conventional intents and purposes. Outside of horsepower for cars and atmospheres for pressure, where do we use the old metric system instead of SI today? People rarely if ever call temperature by centigrade now either. We call it Celsius instead. --Nolidor (talk) 13:39, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Degrees Celsius isn't an SI unit. It's accepted for use alongside SI units, but it isn't SI. SI could be considered the only internationally recognized standard for the metric system, but that doesn't make the two things identical. Many countries that use the metric system don't use SI units, but rather use variants. Also consider systems like cgs, which are variants of the metric system but are fundamentally not SI. - Grant (talk) 17:00, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Would you please show where and how common it is that people use the metric system, specifically cgs, outside of SI? --Nolidor (talk) 13:25, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

CGS (properly known as CGS-Gaussian) is quite common in electrodynamics. It's popular there because in CGS-Gaussian units the electric and magnetic fields carry the same units (in SI, they obviously do not). Under this system of units, the speed of light also becomes the only dimension-full constant in Maxwell's equations, which is a nice thing to have. Also, in particle physics, a system of natural units is common to use (an interesting variant of CGS units), in which both the speed of light and Planck's constant are set to be dimensionless and equal to unity. A less extreme version of these natural units is used frequently in quantum information, in which it's easier to set Planck's constant dimensionless and equal to unity. Why make these changes? The change to the speed of light makes energy, mass, and momentum carry the same units (this is hugely appealing in relativistic quantum mechanics and relativistic particle physics), and the change to Planck's constant makes energy and frequency carry the same units as well. This last bit is quite useful in quantum mechanics, especially in systems exploring resonance, in which the gap between two energy levels in a quantum system can be expressed as a frequency. None of these systems are SI, and yet they are all metric. - Grant (talk) 16:01, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

...so in other words, in a highly specific field of study, cgs is still plausible. In the general world though, it's not. It sounds like you're referring to the exception to the rule. I mean I don't mean to be dismissive, but we shouldn't confuse the rule with the exception to it. Yes, there are sometimes plausible purposes to retain obsolete systems, but that's sometimes, not all the time. For the rest of the time, we should stay up to date. --Nolidor (talk) 13:22, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

In quite a few fields of study, and in several countries, cgs is still plausible. In the general world, you're correct that it's not. However, in the general world, SI isn't either. The metric system is, for one, more broad than SI. There are still countries in the world that have adopted metric systems, but not SI. While the metric system is sometimes used as though it's synonymous with SI, it's not.

More importantly, however, most of the dealings of SI are entirely irrelevant to RW's mission. SI sets specific standards for which base units to use and how to measure them (the concept of using a decimal system and the prefixes associated with them predate SI by some time). This is minutiae that we have no need to cover. - Grant (talk) 16:42, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

No Kidding? Maybe its just because I'm an American but I always thought that all of the fuss being made over the "original kilogram" was stupid, if it is losing mass than who the hell cares? The idea that you should base your measurements on an object rather than an abstract idea is silly because it's not actually necessary. Alsto003 (talk) 00:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC) Alex

@Alsto003, I believe the definition of SI units are out of the scope of this article as it's about debunking the reluctance of people to adopt the metric system, or at least to question the imperial one by comparison with the metric system. The fuss about the "original kilogram" may sounds stupid, the point is that is was not supposed to happen at all (the loss of weight, not the fuss). And yes, it's pretty actually necessary to base measurements versus 'an object' rather than an abstract idea: 1) I'm not sure about how to use an abstract idea for measurement, and 2) other SI units are 'objects' too (e.g. photons and electrons) interacting through physical forces with the measurement device. --WinterNurgle (talk) 08:59, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Specific Impulse

As I understand, specific impulse is less about bureaucratic inertia (?) and more about using the same damn unit across the whole world. Because to calculate the delta-v, one need to include the conversion factor anyway. --205.211.157.179 (talk) 18:36, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

American workers unreliable due to lack of metric?

So the paragraph that talks about "Americans have an overall poor grasp of measurement" seems a bit problematic to me. I'm all for giving a bit of crap to the United Statesians for their refusal to get on the metric bus, but part of this paragraph seems like a general statement of fact that is basically sourced from some guy's anecdote about one company he worked at. The claim that "Americans are considered unreliable in working with metric units...resulting in more jobs going to [other countries]" seems out of proportion to the quality of the source.

Am I wrong about this? I'm new here so not going to make an edit on something like that without consensus on the talk page, but it seems like that statement should be changed if it doesn't have stronger backing. Gringodemaio (talk) 15:30, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gringodemaio, I believe this statement was intended to be humoristic (but quite clumsy, indeed). The source [8] looks like a personal point of view that lacks of supportive documentation and therefore not to be trusted. In the other hand, the source [7] seams to be much more reliable, and goes through a quick meta analysis (with cited sources) to conclude that "In other words, our [American] kids can not measurement in either [imperial or metric] system of measurement."

That being said, I believe this discussion should be more about the remove of source [8] that appears to me as unnecessary. Regards WinterNurgle (talk) 07:39, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

A few considerations

I'd like to highlight the followings points:

• The title "Metric system" may be misleading as the article either deals with the US metrification, or is understood that way. The very first section "The SI" clarifies the point by stating that the metric system was one amongst others the 'prototype' of the SI. After that, the metric system seams to switch to the unamerican system of units used to simplify the unpatriotic engineers' jobs which is -I believe- the point that the article is aiming to debunk.
• The section "Awesome simplicity" is... say... obscure for non American readers as they will lack of the original reference, because... say... they aren't used to the imperial system. Maybe a simple table (imperial versus metric) would help foreign readers to grasp the fore mentioned awesome simplicity.
• The "Metric Time" section worth to be mentioned, maybe it would fit better as part of the 'history' part of the "The SI" section. It was -and is still- a good example of what happens when the laypeople acceptance limits is reached when working things are forcibly modified.
• The "The practical metric system is broken too" section contains -in my point of view- two major errors:

1. the non decimal units system for time: the SI only mentions the second as a time unit and prescribes how to measure it. Minute, hour, day, week (and all the family) are outside of the SI (just check to the several definitions of a day if you like headaches). In regards of the SI, one hour should be expressed as 3.6 kiloseconds (and yes, it's ugly). Also, date and time formats are defined by the ISO 8601. Therefore, blaming the usage of non decimal unit for time stamping in unfair for the poor SI :'(
2. the speed being written in km/h is not a proof of the SI failure, if it was the point. There is, at my current knowledge, no technical mean to actually measure a speed. It can be computed as the difference of positions in space divided by a difference of times (both of them being measured independently), or by derivation of an acceleration (which can be measured too, but not in the scope of the SI). The SI itself is merely only about how to measure a unit of a dimension.

Also, what about the misusage of the SI prefixes in computer science ? Regards --WinterNurgle (talk) 14:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@WinterNurgle Good points made. Frankly, I think this article is pretty weak in its current shape; it pales in comparison to what they have at Wikipedia, which is much more informative. You cannot debunk nonsense if your article lacks substance. Please feel free to edit this article and make it better. Nerd (talk) 14:10, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

It's hard to avoid confusing the SI and the metric system. The article could mention how prior to the current SI, there was a whole different system of metric measurements, the Centimetre–gram–second system of units which was evidently even worse.

Measuring speeds in km/h is stupid because the SI units aren't considered useful by people using vehicles. If people don't use a unit, that's generally because it doesn't suit their purposes, which is the chief criticism of metric and SI units.

It's also a failure of the SI measurement of time that it doesn't include common periods like the day and year, instead being based on the arbitrary second. You (the OP) admit the concept of an hour as 3.6 ks is ugly, but try to blame ISO?

And you can't clearly distinguish "computing" something from "measuring it" - all measurement involves computation, e.g. measurement of mass is generally done by mesuring the weight and scaling by the acceleration due to gravity; measurement of distance is often done using light or radar range-finders, which again involve a computation, or by GPS... You could "measure" speed by measuring kinetic energy, or by measuring red shift (used for speed of astronomical objects), but again calculation is needed. --Gospatric (talk)

@Gospatric, you made some good points too but I disagree with the difficulty to distinguish metric system from the SI. First the metric system was an ancestor of the SI (as reminded by the article), fine, let's consider it has changed. Now it's (according to WP, yes I am a lazy person) a subset of the SI. Ok, both are quite similar in the end but one contains the other. Needless to say that when using the 'modern' metric system, one use de facto the SI. I think the confusion comes from a bad habit -no offense intended- in the usage of these words. And I would add the bad habit may comes from the very usage of the words 'metric system'.

I missed my point with the km/h issue, sorry. 'km/h' as a unit is as useful as 'mph' -for instance to guesstimate how long one has to drive to arrive at the rendez-vous point- and both fit nicely the purpose of driving safely (just because local signs are in the same unit). My point was initially that km/h is not an SI unit strictly speaking. For this topic, the SI defines both the metre and the second as units, that's it. If the ISO 8601 wants to defines the hour as 1/24 of the regular day duration of a given year (I don't remember which one), that's ok in the end but the hour is therefore a derived unit of the second ('coz the 'regular day duration of a given year' is still to be measured to know how many seconds there are in an hour). Now let's go further and imagine that the ISO 8601 is revised, and the hour is redefined as the 1/24 of the stellar day duration of the 12/12/12 (huhu). The duration of the hour may change a little bit but not the one of the second, despite both of them being arbitrary chosen. In short, 'km/h' should not be considered as part of SI unless the hour is defined as a collection of seconds. Ok, I'm somehow trolling, as it is commonly accepted that one hour equals 3.6000 kiloseconds but ain't technically speaking true.

About my assessment that 3.6 ks is ugly were a simple statement I intended to be humoristic. There is no point to blame the ISO, unless an ISO is edited to standardize the ugliness. In addition, the lack of hour or day definition can't be considered as a failure of the SI, as already stated, day duration is defined by ISO not the SI. Why the frenchies did not bother define a day duration in their damn metric system soon to become the SI? Well, it was thought about with the metric time idea not in the scope. This SI consists of a set of base units, prefixes and derived units. Thanks to ISOs, people from around the globe tend to agree upon how to use these units to facilitate communications and commercial exchanges, the determination of the day duration being an example.

You are very right with the measure/calculation point. Nowadays, the very vast majority of measurements implies calculation to at least render the measured value. Please have a look at the VIM and GUM. Calculations in the measurement process are part of the 'measuring system'. For instance, take a quartz watch -an instrument that measures time periods. Typically, the watch's second is defined by a group of oscillations of the resonating quartz. Hence, the watch only has to 'count' oscillation of the quartz to determine if a time period (let's say a second) has passed or not since the last detected second. This calculation (the oscillation counting) may be either done by mechanical or digital means, but remain in the 'measuring system' that provides a measurement of elapsed time periods. Now, what I called computation was referring to calculations using as input the value of measurements (that may include calculations) to generate an output value. This last value has not been measured but calculated, that's the case of speed that cannot be measured directly but require the measurement of two values before a speed value can be process. I'll go further and respond to each of your examples:

• measurement of mass is generally done by mesuring the weight and scaling by the acceleration due to gravity: the weight is measured and the mass is computed as you stated and provided the acceleration due to gravity has been measured too (!).
• measurement of distance is often done using light or radar range-finders: good example as only the travel duration of light is measured, calculations being part of the measuring system (photometer + chronometer = distance, just think about it).
• GPS: Geolocalization is perform by trigonometry, only maths here.
• kinetic energy: kinetic energy can only be calculated as E=1/2mv² provided one knows both the mass and the velocity.
• measuring red shift (used for speed of astronomical objects): I'm not sure about how the red shift is determined but I'll guesstimate that it require a few photometers (at different wavelengths to spot the shift) and a chronometer (to quantify the shift). Implying computation for 'measuring' red shift.

Guys, thanks you for reading as I tend to easily getting off the road --WinterNurgle (talk) 09:51, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Ok, so just to let you know, I allowed myself to perform some rework on the article. --WinterNurgle (talk) 11:54, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

No kidding, Winter. What you've accomplished is a total re-write, and in a style that I personally find pedestrian. Your work is more than should be undertaken without consensus. Ithaca8 (talk) 14:15, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

@Ithaca8 Do you feel I went too far with the modifications? Are there sections more impacted than other? Or is that you disagree on some parts I added? Anyway, sorry for my pedestrian writer's skill -I guess "pedestrian" isn't a compliment- English is not my mother tongue. But I assume the talk page is expected to be talking about the article to improve it. I would be more than pleased if you could provide a more detailed feedback. Thanks in advance. --WinterNurgle (talk) 06:10, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

I moved @WinterNurgle's changes to Draft:Metric system rewrite as they were severely lacking in proofreading. Feel free to fix it up there. I believe we should have two pages, this one which just explains the system and how it works (an "outline"-style page) and one covering its adoption (metrication). —Kazitor 09:06, 24 July 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that's a good move. Ithaca8 (talk) 13:47, 24 July 2018 (UTC)